WELCOME!

Writing is a solitary pursuit--the imagination guiding the hand moving the pen. I'm pretty old-school, valuing the work of good editors and the revisions process before letting my words go public. But life is short, right? And sometimes, just sometimes, we need to spout off.

About me...

A writer, mother, teacher, friend, I love books, blizzards and beaches, music from Hildegard von Bingen to the Beatles to Bonnie Raitt to The Brood; I love medieval churches, red wine, creme caramel, and roasted beets, and walking the woods and coastlines of home.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Say the subconscious is an ironstone edifice with a few rocks loose, a terrifying iron staircase inside that starts off circular, then climbs calcified walls in an Escher-like zigzag. Relativity this particular image is called. In any case going up is easier than descending, the most heart-stopping part looking down. The foreshortened end of the circular stairs a dot. So you put off leaving, and stay at the summit as long as possible, the view from the top quite splendid--the stuff of dreams, if you have x-ray eyes that can see to the very bottom of the arm below. Bottles, golf balls, no doubt a dead rowboat or two. And all those dares, double dares, triple,stories, kids' bragging, tales of scaling the flagpoles at the very top, just to show off...

Friday, December 3, 2010

So said St. Catherine of Siena. Enduring surely applies to most things to do with words, with writing, with waiting, with finding time for writing, with persevering through the present state of publishing, etc etc etc. Catherine also said Love, and speak the truth.
Words to boost us on these bleak rainy days that are so short on daylight. The greyness and bareness plotting, surely. All the natural world in wait. Snow, some snow would be good. A healthy bit of blizzarding (once school is over, marking finished, grades submitted, DONE) and that hunkering down that means winter. That hallowed season for word nerds: the best kind of hibernation, with no temptations of bee balm, hummingbirds, grass. Tho I'm not sure how Catherine would interpret this, kneeling in Tuscany six hundred years ago. Hang in, hang in. It's what we do, along with being honest, even when the truth hurts.